Life a matter of 'Wordplay' for Shortz

Indiana native edits Times' crossword puzzles

Indiana native edits Times' crossword puzzles

July 28, 2006|MICHAEL O'SULLIVAN The Washington Post

Will Shortz is not a geek. OK, maybe he is, but just a little bit, and not so as you'd notice. "I would like to think that if I were at a party, and people didn't know my occupation, I could pass as a normal person," he says. He's joking, of course. The editor of The New York Times crossword puzzle and NPR "puzzle master," Shortz was in Washington recently for the Silverdocs film festival screening of "Wordplay," a documentary about crossword aficionados in which he's not just prominently featured, but referred to by comedian and puzzle fanatic Jon Stewart as "the Errol Flynn of crosswords." This flattery, presumably, because Shortz, at 53, is a robust-looking guy with a dapper mustache and a mischievous grin -- a far cry from the stereotype of the stunted, asthmatic word-weenie facetiously imagined by Stewart. So it isn't true then, as has been reported, that Shortz's favorite breakfast is the somewhat predictable -- not to mention geeky -- Alpha-Bits cereal? "I tell you," he says with a laugh, "it used to be my favorite cereal. They changed the formula, and it tastes like (naughty four-letter word) now, so I don't eat it anymore." The nerd quotient of the crossword fanatic is "way overstated" anyway, Shortz says. "To be a good crossword solver, you have to be a well-rounded person, basically. You've got to know classical subjects, and then you've got to know modern subjects. You have to have a flexible mind, and it helps to have a sense of humor. The whole image of puzzlers being geeky is propagated by people who have psychological problems." Bam! Any scenes in the movie, which opens today at the Vickers Theatre in Three Oaks, that might suggest otherwise -- such as one in which Ellen Ripstein, the 2001 winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), is shown walking in the rain with a very obviously broken umbrella -- are, Shortz says, merely examples of "affectionate" ribbing of lovable personality quirks. So who's cuter? The occasionally eccentric puzzle wizards of "Wordplay," whose main action centers around the top competitors at last year's ACPT (an annual event Shortz founded in 1978 and continues to host), or the whiz kids of "Spellbound," the popular 2001 spelling-bee documentary populated by pint-size brainiacs? First of all, Shortz says, it isn't a fair fight. "When you compare kids in 'Spellbound' with adults in 'Wordplay,' you have to go with the kids. They're just so cute. But if you're talking adults versus adults, I would go with the crossword crowd because they're more well-rounded." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shortz fancies himself something of a crossword puzzle ambassador to the non-puzzle-obsessed world. His goal, he says, is to see the ACPT televised someday, in the same way that other non-sport competitions are. "If Scrabble can be on television, and it's popular -- the spelling bee and poker -- if all these mental activities, mental sports, can be on TV, then I think crosswords can, too." Shortz knows all too well just how passionate people can be about their puzzles. When he took over at the Times after the 1993 death of the paper's venerable crossword editor, Eugene T. Maleska, Shortz says he was immediately "raked over the coals" by "longtime experts" who wrote in, complaining that he had dumbed down the puzzle by introducing -- gasp -- clues based on popular culture, puns and wordplay. It's true, Shortz says, he did lower the bar of the Monday puzzle, traditionally the easiest crossword of the week, which increases in difficulty through Saturday. (The Sunday magazine puzzle, although longer than those in the daily paper, has only a Thursday degree of difficulty.) In response to the whiners, though, he soon ramped up the challenge of the Friday and Saturday puzzles, making those two puzzles today something only the elite can regularly solve. "Ha!" he recalls thinking at the time, "You want hard? I'll show you what hard is." Shortz's interest in sadism, er, crosswords began in childhood, when he constructed -- and published -- his first crossword at the age of 14. But his expertise was honed while an undergraduate at Indiana University, where he formed a department of one in the field of "enigmatology" -- a course of independent study he created out of the school's Individualized Majors Program. "One of my courses was on the construction of crossword puzzles," Shortz says. "Every two or three weeks, I'd bring an original crossword I'd constructed to my professor's office. We'd sit together. He'd solve and critique my puzzle." Sweet course load, dude. "I also took several courses in mathematical puzzles," Shortz says. "How to create them and what's interesting about them. Logic puzzles. The psychology of puzzles. Crossword magazines. And my thesis was on the history of American word puzzles before 1860." Oh. Speaking of mathematical puzzles, Shortz says that, contrary to many people's assumptions, he's no crossword snob, and that after some initial hesitation, he has come to wholly embrace Sudoku, a numbers-based puzzle that burst on the Western puzzling world early last year after picking up steam in Japan. "Part of the appeal of crosswords is that it tests your knowledge, your vocabulary," he says. "With Sudoku, you don't have to know anything. ... When I saw the first one, and read all the hoopla about it, I thought, 'How interesting can this be? Come on.' And after I did a couple, I realized, 'Yeah, this is addictive.' " It sounds as if Shortz has a lot on his plate these days, between his slow-moving campaign to bring crosswords to TV -- "ESPN hasn't been calling" -- and raking in the cash from the 23 Sudoku books he's edited -- "I'm actually making a lot more money from Sudoku," he says, "than I am from the Times." He's also bracing himself for the onslaught of superstardom -- or at least the loss of anonymity -- if "Wordplay" should become a hit. Right now, he says, he relishes the fact that nobody recognizes him, especially during commutes to and from his home in suburban New York. "When I take the train back to my home in Pleasantville from New York City, I sometimes, if I see someone solving the Times crossword, I'll sit next to him. And if he finishes the puzzle, or seems to like it, I will introduce myself. If he doesn't finish, or if he does poorly or doesn't seem to like it, then I'll keep it to myself."